by Daniel Flores,
Center for Social and Political Studies (CESP) of the Puebla Group.
Imputed, blocked, or turned into a pariah or a caricature. Lawfare was imposed in Latin America and the world. They used it against Rafael Correa, Lula da Silva and Julian Assange, among others. In Chile, the case of political persecution is that of Marco Enríquez-Ominami (MEO) who has just won the penultimate of the 13 cases that were raised against him since he dared to be the candidate for social transformations in Chile. Prosecutor Ximena Chong, after seven years of investigations, has decided not to persevere with the accusations of corruption that she accused the politician, and that were amplified through interviews and leaks, especially during times of the electoral campaign.
Marco Enríquez-Ominami, in 2008, long before the student mobilizations that put the country in political suspense, first in 2011 and then in 2019, raised a political movement that aimed to achieve welfare rights and social justice, in an institutional manner. and democratic, for Chileans. For example, during his first political campaigns he had presented the first Chilean abortion law, a constituent assembly, the nationalization of copper, redistribution policies and tax justice especially to tax large fortunes, among other transformations.
In 2014, polls in the last quarter put MEO in first place in popular support, well above former president Sebastián Piñera, who had decided to seek a second presidential term in the following elections, which would be in 2017. The year 2015 began on lawfare against MEO, with an accusation by prosecutor Emiliano Arias, who acknowledged to the press that he had received an offer from President Piñera’s circle to occupy the position of “undersecretary of Crime Prevention.” Then he received the accusations from prosecutor Pablo Gómez, who to date was the husband of someone who had been undersecretary and then minister of justice, also of President Piñera.
The investigations were leaked from the prosecutor’s office, and the press presented them in dribs and drabs, with reports, covers and news that not only came from interested sources, but were also presented decontextualized, and with sensationalist music and editions. And what had to happen happened: MEO fell in the polls and Piñera rose to become, for the second time, president of Chile. Once this happened, Prosecutor Gómez was invited to sit in the front row at the inauguration ceremony for President Piñera’s second term. In addition, he was hired by him as a legal advisor to confront and pursue cases against the protesters during those 2019 protests.
In general, all the accusations against MEO focused on something that journalistic rhetoric called “ideologically false ballots.” By this they were referring to invoices made for work not carried out with the intention of defrauding the treasury, but which, from the beginning, it was demonstrated that they were works that had been carried out and that the treasury was never defrauded. However, there was one accusation that received special treatment from the press, and that was the case of a plane that was used in Enríquez-Ominami’s presidential campaign in 2012.
Although that plane was never a secret, and that it even appeared on the candidate’s television slot, the press turned the “search for the plane” into a “news” event. With special reports, hidden cameras and thriller music, he showed it to the world so that it sounded like a crime. However, the prosecutor who filed the case, Ximena Chong, who even traveled to Brazil to meet with the prosecutors of the OAS case and link Marco to it, ended up dismissing it, years later, as something that was not actually a crime, with luckily an “administrative error”, and that should not be investigated. But Prosecutor Chong continued, and for seven years she investigated Marco Enríquez-Ominami, for crimes now related to his 2017 political campaigns. At the end of April she did the same thing again and, without appearing, from a distance, she realized that “there was no background to support a formalization or an accusation,” and that, therefore, the trial came to nothing.
Marco Enríquez-Ominami was persecuted for conduct that had been common to all political campaigns, and that had never been classified as crimes, and for which, if there had been crimes, only the administrators of those campaigns would be responsible for them. , but not the candidates. By common conduct, I mean that the prosecutors selectively decided to investigate and charge Enríquez-Ominami and not the rest of the candidates, as was demonstrated in the conversations between the persecuting prosecutors obtained by their lawyers.
There were several such exchanges, but the most revealing was when prosecutor Arias sent his colleague Segura a list of those people he proposed be investigated: «Carmen, to send a list to BRIDEC by mail, I believe that the money collected through the issuance of false ballots was going to (and put that list of names, including Enríquez-Ominami)«- Then, Segura responds, surprised by the omissions that Arias made in that list, which should include President Sebastián Piñera and his entourage. To which Arias responded: “I would remove Piñera, or I would include Bachelet, Peñailillo, Arenas (ministers of President Bachelet), etc. And I don’t think it’s wise to send that set. Seem to you?”. Segura, after that response, accepted.
The prosecutors had decided to leave Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera out of the investigation, and focus, instead, on their main contender, Enríquez-Ominami, who became the only candidate under investigation and therefore the scapegoat. of irregular financing of politics in Chile. The facts that have been added to the case are already 15 years old, the trials will soon be ten years old. Two full-time prosecutors have investigated and continue to investigate Enríquez-Ominami. Prosecutors in Chile handle an average of 1,000 cases. These two prosecutors only carry that of Enríquez-Ominami, earning between 5 thousand and 6 thousand dollars a month, with a driver, offices and daily travel expenses. In short, the prosecutors have cost the treasury much more than the money they are imaginatively pursuing.
It is dangerous to open an eye to injustice, because these things always end up happening. But it’s fantastic that there are people who want to survive, like Job, relying on faith in his innocence and the will to want, even just for once, things to get better for people.
